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f the Toronto School’s “global village”
is the head of a coin, then the Frankfurt School’s “irrational rationality” is
its tail. They are two sides of a coin; two different thoughts from different
schools, originated decades ago in response to the same phenomenon - the rise
of technology. While Toronto theorists look at it as ‘an extension of man’, their
Frankfurt counterparts think of it as ‘an appendage of machine’, believing that
the scientific revolution that occurred in the Age of Enlightenment – an origin
of the growth of the modern society – is something irrational that enslaves man.
What a critical theory!
In 1944 Max Horkheimer
and Theodor Adorno, the prominent critical theorists of the Frankfurt School co-wrote
the Dialectic of Enlightenment, introducing an epoch of progress through
the rise of science, technological advances, and the cultivation of individual
freedom.[1]
This paper will rationalize the irrational rationality of the Frankfurt School
of critical theory, and explore how and why cultural transformations distorted
the individual’s capacity to reason, as well as why that concept remains more
or less true in the twenty-first century.
The
Rationale of the Irrationality of Rationality
In The Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Horkheimer and Adorno stated that the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason had
produced contradictory developments: the irrationality of rationality. “Rational
systems inevitably spawn irrationalities that limit, eventually compromise, and
perhaps even undermine their rationality.[2]”
Technological advances, or ‘Reason’, failed to offer “a path to human
liberation”, and had also been transformed into ‘an irresistible force for
new forms of domination’. In other words, the term ‘irrationality of
rationality’ is like a two-sided coin. Take smartphones for example; on one
side, smartphones eliminate the space and time barriers and allow us to connect
to the Internet and use whatever other communication applications made
available on the device. On the other, the critical theorists side, we depend
on our smartphones so much that we cannot even remember our friends’ numbers anymore
as we let the phones do the job for us.
In a broader sense, the unequal
diffusion of technology causes the Digital Divide. Countries with poor
technology become dominated, technologically and economically. A study of an
effect of globalization and the lack of ICT in Nigeria[3]
interestingly notes that,
“…There
are breakthroughs in biotechnology and new materials as well as development in
ICT which firms and other nations must be aware of and proactively anticipate
the trends, consequences and implications as well as device appropriate
response...The emergence of serious economic crisis in most African countries
in the 1980s and Western response of using international financial institutions…has
led to tighter imperialist control of the continent”; and hence, the
term “digital slavery.”[4]
Critical
Theory and the Culture Industry
The critical theory and the culture
industry are connected because the culture industry furthered the collapse of
reason. The term culture industry was used for the first
time in the book The
Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, replacing the term ‘mass
culture’. In the essay Culture Industry Reconsidered[5],
Adorno refered to ‘industry’ as the ‘standardization of the thing itself’ and he
himself asked the readers not to take the word too literally. Within the
culture industry – the standardized product – lies the pseudo-individualization,
which is the new and improved that mask eternal sameness[6].
We see a lot of television soaps in which good guy always wins and eventually gets
the girl, no matter what. We also see a lot of soaps which are the adaptations
of great novels being remake again and again for generations. Everything-but
the actors-is still the same – the eternal sameness.
All of these are examples of standardized
commodities that are created for “mass deception,” in order to abort and
silence criticism. Standardization silences doubt and without doubt, there is
no need to question, thus, no need for reasoning. It makes perfect sense. This
is how the culture industry ‘furthered the collapse of reason’. Imagine you are
getting a recommendation for a product from a ‘friend’ in your social network
site. Without reasoning or thinking it through, you have believed it already.
That is because what your social network friends say is a kind of standardization
– a standard for credibility and trustworthiness of information. Figures from
CrowdTap in their free White Paper: The Power of Peer Influence show that
92% of consumers trust recommendations from their Peer over all other forms of
advertising and recommendations[7].
The critical
theorists, in addition, criticize that the culture industry endlessly cheats
its consumers out of what it endlessly promises. It fabricates what Marx called
“all that is solid melt into air.” A lot of marketing
strategies today do not sell the product. They sell the ‘values’ of the
products. Scott and Edles (2007), in their book, give an example of a Japanese
automaker, selling the values of freedom to potential consumers in Harlem, New
York, an area predominated by African-American whose freedom has been denied
for decades. The example reminds me of what I learned from a marketing course I
took last summer called the “value-delivery process”, which is: choosing the
value, providing the value, and communicating the value[8].
It’s all about how to ‘sell’ the ‘values’. The point is what critical theorists
criticized then is now happening and is currently the popular marketing
strategy of the twenty-first century.
Conclusion
Of all the rationality of my
irrationality, I would like to propose this paper as a critical thinking of today’s
world of information communication technology. It is a fact that technological
development happens all the time, constantly and fast. Since you cannot run or
hide from it, the question is how do you embrace and be liberated – not
dominated – by it? Technology, like many other things, has two sides: one
rational (good) and the other irrational (bad). It would be irrational to give mobile
phones to the people in a very less developed area and say you have
successfully and rationally solved the Digital Divide issue and freed all from
digital slavery. Technology
could be a tool to a development but not the development per se.
[1]Appelrouth, Scott,
and D.Edles, Laura. 2007. Sociological Theory in the Contemporary
Era. California State University,
Northridge. Pine Forge Press;
California.
[2] Ritzer,
George. 2013. The McDonldization of Society. Sage
Publication; California.
[3] L. A.
Ogunsola. 2005. “Information and
Communication Technologies and the Effects of Globalization: Twenty-First
Century "Digital Slavery" for Developing Countries--Myth or
Reality?”. The Electronic Journal of
Academic and Special Librarianship.
v.6, no.1-2 (Summer 2005). Retrieved on February 15, 2013 from
<http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v06n01/ogunsola_l01.htm>
[4] The paper in
footnote 3 explains the characteristics of slavery as “the slave was deprived
of personal liberty and the right to move about geographically as he desired.
There were likely to be limits on his capacity to make choices with regards to
his
occupation.
At this juncture, one can rightly ask how the above characteristics of slavery
fit in to this concept of 'digital slavery'”
[5] Adorno wrote
this essay, the Culture Industry Reconsidered as he looks back at his
earlier writings on the culture industry. The essay is one of many compiled
into a book. Adorno, Theodor. 1991. The
Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. Routledge; New York. pp. 100.
[6] Appelrouth,
Scott, and D.Edles, Laura. 2007. Sociological Theory in the Contemporary Era.
California State University, Northridge.
Pine Forge Press; California.
[7]A post by Gary
Bembridge posted in CustomerThink.com on June 18, 2012 cited CrowdTap information
on peer recommendations in his aticle “Why Peer Recommendations are Absolutely
Critical for Marketing Success Today” Retrieved on February 17, 2013 from http://www.customerthink.com/blog/why_peer_recommendations_are_absolutely_critical_for_marketing_success_today.
CrowdTap is a website where consumers and brands collaborate; people get
rewards (Amazon gift odes and charity donations) for giving input on brands or
products. The website has been in a beta mode since 2010.
[8] Wittaya
C.Sopon. 2012. Positioning Excellence:
The Right Solution, the Right Positioning. Lecture. Marketing Certificate
Program-MCP Excellence Series. Thammasart University.
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